


008 "robotics department"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [8]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Naughtiness, Pre-Iron Man, Tony is not PC, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:23:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony muses on the difficult time Pepper has interacting with other people in the company, who either yell at her when he misbehaves or assume she's controlling all his actions. In an example of the latter, Pepper advises him not to accept an interview with a reporter he just slept with (and forgot about), much to the PR maven's displeasure. Not that Tony cares; he's too busy investigating exactly what Pepper meant when she said she'd never had sex with a human before. "Harvard has a very impressive robotics department, doesn't it?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	008 "robotics department"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

I know my stories don't really have a lot of characters in them. I normally did interact with a lot of different people every day—work, press, social events, food delivery guys—but most of those interactions were rather mundane. I tried to inject a little flair into the lives of everyone I met, because I was just that kinda guy, but I could only do so much.

This story starts with several people in the car you might not have known. Of course Pepper was there, because Pepper was always there. I didn't remember all of the others and may not have known them at the time—entourages of people just ended up in my car sometimes, and as long as they weren't trying to mug me I didn't care too much.

One of the people I knew was Joan from PR. We'd had a lot of dealings. Contrary to popular belief, Pepper did _not_ rule everything in every aspect of my life—for example, interview requests went to PR, who hashed them out and advised me on which to accept, and _then_ Pepper stepped in to coordinate the logistics with someone like Joan. You know, when, where, what color of M &M's to have in the green room (actually Pepper would have eaten the M&M's, no matter what color, but you get the picture). And then it was Pepper's job to get me to the interview on time and sober, with her little color-coded talking points, and to make sure everything went smoothly from my perspective. And if all her efforts couldn't stop me from making a mess, PR came back in and cleaned it up.

"…and we've got an interview request from _Vanity Fair_ ," Joan from PR added, glancing over her notes.

"Ooh, that's exciting," I remarked cheerfully. I usually enjoyed giving interviews, because I craved attention. "Who's the writer?"

Joan checked her notes again. "Alexandra Suffolk."

The name meant nothing to me, but then I usually skipped over bylines. "Yeah, sure, let's see if we can work it out. Sounds like fun. No, you know, on second thought, cancel that. Maybe with a different writer." Joan frowned at my sudden reversal, which was prompted by Pepper putting her hand on my thigh. That was Pepper's silent code for, 'You don't really want to do that.' And ninety percent of the time the reason involved a one-night stand. It had definitely happened that I had walked into an interview and found out the writer was one of my 'dates,' whose name and sometimes even face I'd forgotten. Awkward! And not really good for generating positive publicity—forgotten dates could be pretty vengeful, I had to say. But now Pepper was around to remember them and warn me when I was about to encounter one, or when I should try to avoid it.

"But Alexandra Suffolk is the one who came up with the idea," Joan pointed out. "I don't think she'll give it up. It might be the cover story…"

Tempting, very tempting. Some days it could be difficult to maintain the balance between two things I quite enjoyed—being _on_ covers and being _under_ them. But Pepper's hand was still on my leg. "No," I told Joan firmly. "Tell 'em I could always go to _GQ_ instead. They have way better clothing at _GQ_ shoots anyway."

" _GQ_ is fluff," Joan reminded me unnecessarily. This was getting tiresome. " _Vanity Fair_ wants to do an in-depth piece about technology in modern warfare and _you_ personally."

Talking about myself for several hours to a willing audience? _And_ about my second-favorite subject of weapons technology? Joan could no doubt see me waver. "Pepper, when _was_ that, exactly?" I asked, turning to my redoubtable assistant.

She was on her phone talking business but managed to pull it away long enough to reply, "A month."

I snorted and looked at Joan again. "A month! No way! Tell her to call back in another four or so." Of course, if I refused to work with anyone I'd slept with ever, I would have missed out on some very good interviews. But, I didn't want a reporter thinking the way to a high-profile byline was between my sheets, because to me the two things had nothing to do with one another. So my general policy was to sleep with the hot woman first, then put several months between that and any professional encounter. Simplified things considerably.

For me, anyway. Joan didn't look too pleased. Hey, I had to sacrifice, too—I'd have to wait four more months to be on the cover. But then again, that would put it after my trip to Afghanistan to demonstrate the new Jericho missile, so I would have even more successes to talk about (or so I thought at the time). Pepper removed her hand from my leg, signaling her approval of my decision. Joan noticed and looked even _less_ pleased—Joan was one of those people who didn't really appreciate Pepper's talents.

I don't want to get on a tangent here, but Pepper interacted with a lot of different people each day, too, and most of them weren't as respectful of her skills as I was. If she did all the hard work of wrangling me from place to place and making sure the number of things I needed to have accomplished each day actually got done (which was mathematically impossible, by the way, but Pepper could bend the laws of logic to her will), nobody even noticed her (except me, of course). But if one little thing went wrong—even something totally out of her control, like weather or traffic or me being an a-s—then all of a sudden everyone started yelling at her. She got chewed out by PR and Legal and everyone else all the time because there were only a couple people, maybe, who could chew _me_ out and live to tell about it. It was like Pepper was my own personal whipping girl. Which I occasionally felt a little bit bad about, except that Pepper didn't seem to care and the whole 'whipping girl' imagery was pretty hot.

And some people, conversely, seemed to think that it was actually Pepper pulling my strings (would _that_ were true)—like telling me what to eat for breakfast, what to wear, who to interview with, what to sign. Which was totally ridiculous, of course. I mean, okay, sometimes Pepper made _suggestions_ , or she _reminded_ me of things I'd forgotten, but she was no power behind the throne, you know? Pepper assisted. Ably. And she assisted _me_ , as opposed to doing whatever those anal killjoys in PR and Legal _wanted_ her to do with me. So sometimes, there was tension there. Don't think I hadn't noticed. Not that Pepper would have said anything, but I had other informants.

Anyway. I could see that Joan still wanted to plead her case, but I could be very stubborn and I didn't mind being an a-s about it either. Someone had left a magazine lying on the seat nearby and I snatched it up before Joan could speak again. "Maybe I could give another interview to _Cosmo._ _Cosmo_ has the hottest interns." I flipped through the magazine, holding it at an angle so Joan could clearly see the cover, which promised to tell me 'Ten Top Sex Tricks to Drive Him Wild,' among other things. "You know, they just recycle these lists from issue to issue," I observed. "Maybe I could give them some new material." I paused to read while Joan, I felt, rolled her eyes in exasperation at my shallowness. "Okay, _that's_ obvious. _That's_ just stupid. _That_ does not work and I wish they would stop printing it. _That_ —hmm, I never thought about _that_ before…"

"Mr. Stark," Joan interrupted uncomfortably.

"I don't know, Joan, I really need a woman's perspective on this," I announced. "What do you think of number eight?" I turned the magazine around so she could see the full-page spread for 'Top Ten Make-up Removal Tricks' and gave her an expectant look.

I couldn't tell if Joan was disappointed or relieved that she wouldn't actually be filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against me today. But she did look like she wanted to roll the magazine up and beat me with it. "I don't know, sir," she answered stiffly. "I don't wear mascara." Well _somebody_ couldn't take a joke. But at least she looked like she was going to shut up now.

I flipped the magazine to another page and held it out to Pepper. This time it _was_ the sex tips list, but Pepper wouldn't have known sexual harassment if it bit her in the a-s (not that I'd done that—yet). "What do _you_ think of number eight, Pepper?"

I didn't know what I was expecting her to say. Something unintentionally funny, of course, after which I would smirk and then go back to all the other people who were clamoring for my attention now that Joan had conceded defeat.

But instead Pepper carefully considered number eight and then replied, "I don't know, sir. I've never had sex with a human before."

And with that, my attention was fully and completely diverted. "Well. Really, huh? Never with a human, huh? What kind of other options are we talking about here?"

"Mr. Stark, if we could go over the budget figures from this quarter—" interrupted some nerdy-sounding kid behind me.

I ignored him and scooted closer to Pepper, lowering my voice for a semblance of a private conversation. "So are we talking about alien abduction here? Boyfriend who thought he was a vampire?" I figured Pepper was going to say something like, 'Wait, do Canadians count as human?' and, you know, have an explanation that wasn't nearly as shockingly kinky as what I was thinking of. But either way I was discussing Pepper's sex life with her, an event which had never happened before, and, well, the polite word for what I was feeling was _intrigued_. "Did you—did you grow up on a _farm_ , Pepper?"

I didn't even notice the car lurching to a stop. "Well, sir—" Pepper began innocently, and I leaned into her even more.

"We're here, sir!" someone cut in. "Sir, we're here. The meeting?"

F—k the meeting. This was _way_ more important to me at the moment. "Yes, Pepper?" I prevented her from scooting out of the car with everyone else, who seemed to be in a big hurry.

"Well, when I was in college—"

"Tony, what are you doing? Come on!" That was Obadiah, sticking his head into the car impatiently. "We're late already!" Obadiah had been even moodier than usual the last few weeks, which I attributed to nerves—the Jericho was the biggest thing we'd ever designed, weapons-wise, and I figured he was worried there might be some kind of glitch at the upcoming demo. (Ha.)

Pepper looked brightly at my older mentor. "Harvard has a very impressive robotics department, doesn't it, Mr. Stane?"

Obadiah looked at her like she was insane (at least I presumed he did—I was too busy choking). "Yeah, they've got some great f-----g stuff there," he agreed off-hand, mystified.

Pepper looked me right in the dilated eye and smiled. "Exactly."

"Gur-ungh-ah," I babbled.

"Now get your a-s out of the car, maybe he'll follow it," Obadiah ordered, and Pepper complied. After winking at me.

Winking! Pepper winked at me! And made sexual innuendos (on purpose)! I felt like the world had flipped over, in a good way.

But I didn't pursue it later. I was really busy—more so than usual—and, well, to be honest I didn't know if I could handle this new development. A month later the world flipped over in a bad way and I figured I would never get the chance again.

* * *


End file.
